Why you should be careful with a wink smiley

This weekend a good acquaintance of mine asked if I could recommend some nice hotels  in Paris to him. Now it just so happens that we’ll both be  in Paris for work  (next week to be exact) and we had agreed to meet up for a glass of wine one evening. Later he texted me with the question, “Have you managed to look for a nice hotel for me… ;-).” What’s. That. Wink. Doing. There?!

Was this a subtle hint? Our friendship is purely platonic, but he is very single and quite easy on the eye. I wouldn’t dream of wanting any more of him but that text suddenly made me doubt his intentions. Later we were chatting on the phone and it turned out he was madly in love with some girl and so I concluded there was nothing to worry about. When I decided to write this post, I asked him about the wink and his answer was, “oh god, no that was only because I felt so bad nagging you about whether you’d found a hotel for me.” See, it’s tricky.

So please, be careful with those wink smilies. I poked about a bit and realised that every question or remark combined with a wink smiley suddenly starts to look a little dubious.

“How old is your sister? ;-)”

“Could you bring some cucumbers from the market? ;-)”

“I’m working at home because I am having a package delivered ;-)”

“Say Hi to your grandma from me ;-)”

See. ALL FREAKY. Apart from that, I actually think the wink smiley is a sign of weakness. It’s used to soften a statement a little (like the hotel question) but if you feel uncomfortable about your request, then change it or the wording – and leave that smiley out altogether. In short, the wink smiley does little good and we’ll all be better off if its use is limited to the strict minimum necessary. And I should know ;-).